§ 61.
The monks' parlour (
auditorium juxta
capitulum) was a narrow vaulted apartment in the
ground-floor of the eastern range between the chapter-house
and the sub-vault of the dorter. It was occasionally
used, as at Beaulieu and Waverley, for
a passage to the infirmary; but a separate passage,
where the infirmary stood east of the range, was
also made, as at Fountains, through the adjacent bay
of the dorter sub-vault, which was walled off from
the rest. The sub-vault, a long apartment, which at
Furness extended no less than twelve bays south of
the passage, was generally divided into two vaulted
alleys by a central range of columns. It may have
been partitioned off and applied to various uses, but
at Furness it seems to have been undivided. From
arrangements which are known to have existed at
Clairvaux in 1517, it is now supposed to have been
used, at any rate in part, as the house of the novices,
possibly divided into a day-room, dorter and lodging
for the novice-master. In a few instances, as at
Croxden, Furness and Jervaulx, one or two of the
southernmost bays originally formed an open
loggia,
with piers and arches taking the place of the outer
walls: this space, however, in the two latter cases,
was walled in after no long time. It may be noted
that in the Benedictine houses of Peterborough and
Westminster, where the common house was, according
to the ordinary plan, in the sub-vault, a chapel was
built as an eastern annexe, which was probably used
at Peterborough as the chapel of the novices. This
appears to bring corroborative evidence to the prevailing
theory of the use of the Cistercian sub-vault,
of which no part, however, was employed as the
common or warming-house.
